Vorpal wrote:My uncle had a battle against the squirrels with the his bird feeders. He liked to watch the birds, and after he retired, this became one of his main past times.

But the squirrels!

He modified some baking tins with teflon coating to use as shields. They hung above the the hung feeders, and below the ones on the poles. That worked in a way. The squirrels then jumped from a bush to the feeders. My uncle trimmed the bushes back further and further, so that the squirrels were jumping almost 3 metres to get to one of the feeders. He ended up taking the bushes out and planting some further away, and wrapping the trunks of a couple of trees in sheet metal at the heights from where they could leap to the feeders. They kept trying, anyway, so he eventually put peanuts out for them. Between being fed well enough and making the feeders hard enough to get to, they mostly left the feeders alone.

This became years' long saga.

Control freaks will find various ways to exercise their compulsions. They do get carried away sometimes. There are some extreme examples, even worse that squirrel haters. Take Trump, who hates everything and everybody so that his control freakery has become a danger to us all.

Perhaps he too began with squirrel-hating? It seems a common psycho-affliction, judging by this thread.

We originally had a wooden bird feeder, on a wooden post. The rats had no trouble at all shinning up the post. So we changed it for a metal feeder, on a slender metal pole. I think you can guess how long it took the rats to figure out how to climb the metal pole.....

Sometimes I think, if we exterminated Grey Squirrels, rather than let the Red Squirrels back in, it'd merely provide a new ecological niche for Rattus norvegicus....

al_yrpal wrote:To stop rats and squirrels climbing up the pole that supports our bird table I tied 8 long pieces of brambles with very sharp prickles onto it. Stopped them dead.

Al

Dead you say?.....

If so, they should be bottled in vinegar - prickled pickled squirrel. One could test the children's' progress at articulating words by getting them to repeat the phrase 5 times, quite rapidly: "Please pick me and pack for the picnic a pot of prime prickled pickled squirrel".

No, is previously stated if Jeremy's policies drag us down that far that we are reduced to eating sq'rls I would follow the practice that they have adopted in Louisiana and enjoy them lightly flame grilled on a stick…

al_yrpal wrote:No, is previously stated if Jeremy's policies drag us down that far that we are reduced to eating sq'rls I would follow the practice that they have adopted in Louisiana and enjoy them lightly flame grilled on a stick…

al_yrpal wrote:No, is previously stated if Jeremy's policies drag us down that far that we are reduced to eating sq'rls I would follow the practice that they have adopted in Louisiana and enjoy them lightly flame grilled on a stick…

One species, the squirrel speci...wait a minute...now I'm hearing the greys are invasive, non-native and driving the reds out - this stuff sounds like it is straight out of the NSF (National Squirrel Front) handbook, who says the reds own the British Isles anyway

Freddie wrote:One species, the squirrel speci...wait a minute...now I'm hearing the greys are invasive, non-native and driving the reds out - this stuff sounds like it is straight out of the NSF (National Squirrel Front) handbook, who says the reds own the British Isles anyway

yes the reds are like the britons/celts who were kicked out by the angles/saxons/vikings/romans/etc they have now been here 150 years or so? long enough to me to be called "native"

Same is true of the European rabbit. Not 'native' to the British Isles; I believe the official view (some may disagree) is that it was introduced by the Romans, as a food animal. But today rabbits play an essential role in maintaining habitats like Downland (which, in the absence of grazing, would revert to forest). I wouldn't like to see them exterminated (myxo nearly finished them off - when I was a kid I hardly knew what a rabbit looked like - but not quite).

The European hare, on the other hand, is believed to be native to Britain. Far less often seen than the rabbit, although I don't think this is a case of one species driving out another. A pity really - an encounter with a hare (not being chased by dogs) makes one feel good....

Suppose that this room is a lift. The support breaks and down we go with ever-increasing velocity.Let us pass the time by performing physical experiments...--- Arthur Eddington (creator of the Eddington Number).

I do not share this love of the rabbit.It is a pretty destructive beasty if one farms or gardens. Though quite tasty.

The hare continues to thrive,albeit sparsely, on the Hill of the Hares.Is less of a problem than the Rabbit, breeds more slowly and does not burrow. Can still be destructive in the garden though. A Fort Knox approach works but costs money.A day or so old young leveret is probably the most beautiful thing in creation! ((A little voice comes to me across the decades."Pleeease, can we keep it"!))

That there are some "alien" invaders that would have been better left in their own ecology is, I think, undeniable.Japanese Knotweed and Varroa Mites for astarters.

PDQ Mobile wrote:I do not share this love of the rabbit.It is a pretty destructive beasty if one farms or gardens.

What isn't when you provide it with an all you can eat banquet and remove most of the predators because apparently they're also destructive...

It's still got a long way to go before it matches the destructiveness of man though.

......

Bring back the sabre-toofed tiggers and also the dire wolves. Why not some bad-tempered bears too? These will help reduce the plague of humans ruining everything with their stinkin' death trap cars and queer chemicals!

Of course, I don't want any of the above in my back garden. They can, though, be put in to some of the local parks, especially when the yobboes come out with their attack dogs for a "walk". I believe that dire wolves enjoy the taste of attack-dog; possibly also that of yobboe.

PDQ Mobile wrote:I do not share this love of the rabbit.It is a pretty destructive beasty if one farms or gardens. Though quite tasty.

I didn't say, I love rabbits. Quite the opposite, I think they're a pest too.

But I was making the point that they're here to stay, and they have helped to shape our present-day landscape as we know it. Keeping the numbers down is fine (which is why we need more foxes out in the countryside, rather than foraging rubbish bins in the cities). Totally exterminating the rabbit population, on the other hand, is not on.

Suppose that this room is a lift. The support breaks and down we go with ever-increasing velocity.Let us pass the time by performing physical experiments...--- Arthur Eddington (creator of the Eddington Number).